Events

Water Scarcity in Iran and a National Adaptation Plan

December 11, 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Speaker:

Mohsen B. Mesgaren

Pooya Azadi

Event Sponsor:

Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies

Iran’s water crisis is entering a new paradigm where its impact is becoming visible in the daily lives of millions of people. The practical solutions that can potentially help Iran address its water crisis can be grouped into 1) those that seek to improve water productivity and 2) those that selectively terminate some water-intensive activities. In this talk, Mohsen B. Mesgaran and Pooya Azadi will argue that the ultimate potential reduction in water use by the solutions targeting productivity will not be sufficient to change the calculus in Iran and, therefore, agricultural production should be reduced substantially to mitigate the country's water crisis.

Mohsen B. Mesgaran is an assistant professor of plant sciences at UC Davis. He is also co-leading the research on agriculture and food at the Stanford Iran 2040 Project. Prior to this, he worked on population dynamics and climate niche modeling of plant species at the University of Melbourne for several years. Using statistical and mechanistic models, he has been studying temporal and spatial dynamics of agro-ecosystems.

Pooya Azadi is the manager of the Stanford Iran 2040 Project. His multidisciplinary research interests include energy, environment, and economics. Particularly, he is interested in the development of mathematical models to tackle complex problems at different scales.

Directions: The best GPS address to use is 616 Serra Street. When facing Encina Hall, enter through the middle doors and go up to the third floor.